Conclusion
For the examples of exceptional people like Pandita Ramabai, there are critiques from scholars such as Ado Tiberondwa, who describes the profound ways that missionary education aimed at undermining and destroying indigenous customs and beliefs and fractured clan and tribal solidarities that facilitated the expansion of British predominance in Uganda and elsewhere.62 This was certainly the judgement of many Church leaders in the mid-twentieth century from the non-Western world.
Theologians like John Mbiti, Tissa Balasuriya and Orlando Costas, among many others, issued eloquent and sophisticated critiques of the ways in which Western missionaries were complicit in the exploitation of non-European peoples during the colonial era. These critiques formed the intellectual background to Brian Stanley’s careful study of Christian missions in the age of empires and decolonisation, in which he responded to sweeping generalisations while simultaneously articulating a possible way forward without regarding the missionary enterprise as inherently imperialist.63 Still, for all the complicity of missionaries in the expansion of imperial rule and the subjugation of non-Europeans, particularly in parts of Africa, one can also point to the reality that in India Christianity was most successful in places in which its association with the Raj was less apparent.64 This expansion of Christianity, quite often in India and elsewhere, owed less to the direct intervention of Western missionaries into the spiritual lives of non-Westerners, than to the missionary efforts of non-Western Christians.In a speech made to the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, an Indian Anglican clergyman, advocated for a shift in missionary mentality. The West had given India martyrs, food and education, but what was needed now was friendship.
One missionary in the crowd described the speech as ‘the first shot in the campaign against “missionary imperialism” ’.65 Even in the midst of the high imperial period, the groundwork was laid and converts were ready to talk back. Like Azariah, they were becoming educated, they were using the resources at hand, often supplied by missionaries, to make theologically sophisticated demands for their equal inclusion in the commonwealth of Christ.Given the range of themes and imperial contexts outlined, how ought British missionaries to be assessed historically? By their legacies? By the specific actions they took? By their self-understandings of what they believed they were doing? Responses to these questions will invariably have to address how one assesses Christian missions in general— was (or is) the missionary enterprise a fundamentally imperialistic endeavour?
Notes
1 Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York, 2008), pp. 79-82; Charles Dickens, Bleak House (New York, 1977), chap. 4; Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester, 1990), chap. 1.
2 David Bebbington, ‘Atonement, Sin, and Empire, 1880-1914’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions (Grand Rapids, 2003), pp. 14-31.
3 Ann Stoler, ‘Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th- Century Colonical Cultures’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Nov., 1989), pp. 634-660; Carol Summers, ‘Mission Boys, Civilized Men and Marriage: Educated African Men in the Missions of Southern Rhodesia, 1920-1945’, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), pp. 75-91.
4 Michael Rutz, The British Zion: Congregationalism, Politics and Empire, 1790--1850 (Waco, 2011).
5 T. Jack Thompson, Light on Darkness? Missionary Photography of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Grand Rapids, 2012).
6 Sujit Svitharama, Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795--1850 (New York, 2005); David Maxwell, ‘Photography and the Religious Encounter: Ambiguity and Aesthetics in Missionary Representations of the Luba of South East Belgian Congo', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 53, No. 1 (2011), pp. 38-74.
7 Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley, 2002).
8 Though it is concerned with the American context, Dana Robert's American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, 1996) stands as the most important work on the subject. See also Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York, 2008), chap. 9. The topic of missions and masculinity has received very little attention (though imperial masculinity has produced some very fine and interesting works). For a helpful contribution to the subject, see Erik Sidenvall, The Making of Masculinity among Swedish Missionaries to China and Mongolia, c. 1890-c. 1914 (Leiden, 2009).
9 A seminal work in this vein is Jean and John Comaroff s two-volume Of Revelation and Revolution (Chicago, 1991, 1997).
10 Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity (Maryknoll, 1983); Andrew Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of the Faith (Maryknoll, 2002).
11 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830--1867 (Chicago, 2002); Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford, 1999).
12 Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp. 146-147.
13 Ibid, p. 170.
14 Ibid, p. 11.
15 Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700--1914 (Manchester, 2004).
16 John Barker, ‘Where the Mission Frontier Went Ahead of Empire', in Norman Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire (Oxford, 2005), pp.
86-106.17 Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leicester, 1990).
18 Porter, Religion versus Empire? pp. 10-11.
19 Samuel Ajayi Crowther, A Charge Delivered on the Banks of the River Niger in West Africa (London, 1866), pp. 8-9.
20 Waibinte Wariboko, ‘The CMS Niger Mission, Extra-Territorial Forces of Change, and the Expansion of British Influence in the Niger Delta during the Nineteenth Century', in Chima J. Korieh and Raphael Chijioke Njoku (eds), Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa (London,
2007), pp. 40-45.
21 Augustine S.O. Okwu, Igbo Culture and the Christian Missions, 1857--1957 (New York, 2010), pp. 71-86.
22 Crowther, A Charge Delivered, p. 15.
23 FJ. Kolapo, ‘“Making Favorable Impressions”: Bishop Crowther's C.M.S. Niger Mission in Jihadist Nupe Emirate, 1859-1879', in Chima J. Korieh and G. Ugo Nwokeji (eds), Religion, History, and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ogbu U. Kalu (New York, 2007), pp. 29-51.
24 Okwu, Igbo Culture and the Christian Missions, pp. 86-91.
25 Wariboko, ‘The CMS Niger Mission', p. 45.
26 Henry Dobinson, quoted in Andrew Porter, ‘Cambridge, Keswick, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Africa', The Journal of Commonwealth History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1976), pp. 25-26.
27 Porter, ‘Cambridge, Keswick, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Africa'.
28 It should also be noted that the young English missionaries' tenure in the Niger Mission was relatively short-lived. Some departed for another mission, succumbed to illness or returned to England. Henry Dobinson later wrote that he could only look upon this episode ‘with shame and horror'. Porter, ‘Cambridge, Keswick, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Africa', p. 25; P.R. McKenzie, Inter-Religious Encounters in West Africa (Leicester, 1976), pp. 84-94. See also Elijah Olu Akinwumi, ‘Crowther, Samuel Ajayi, 1810-1891', Dictionary of African Christian Biography, www.dacb.org, accessed 21 January 2013.
29 Michael Lazich, ‘American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China', Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2006), pp. 197-223.
30 Brian Stanley, ‘“Commerce and Christianity”: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842-1860', The Historical Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 (1983), pp. 90-91; Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Britain and China', in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, The Nineteenth Century, Vol. III (New York, 1999), pp. 148-158.
31 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade', The Economic History Review, second series, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1953), pp. 1-15.
32 The Great Commission is a term given to a classic missionary text of Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version): ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.'
33 Quoted in Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York, 2008), p. 173.
34 David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Boston,
1989), chap. 5.
35 Alvyn Austin, China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832--1905 (Grand Rapids, 2007), pp. 186-187.
36 Jason Bruner, ‘The Cambridge Seven, Late Victorian Culture, and the Chinese Frontier', paper presented at the American Society of Church History Conference. Grand Rapids, MI, 7-10 April 2011.
37 B. Broomhall, A Missionary Band, A Record and An Appeal (London, 1886), p. 5.
38 General Noble, a regular attendee of Keswick, wrote in 1895: ‘I am pained to see that Keswick is becoming overgrown and a convention for the rich alone.' Quoted in John Charles Pollock, The Keswick Story: The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention (London, 1964), p. 111.
39 In this sense, missionaries were becoming more professionalised in the nineteenth century and their preparation and pedigree was, in some cases, quite similar to that of the imperial officer or civil servant.
See John Tosh, ‘Imperial Masculinity and the Flight from Domesticity in Britain, 1880-1914', in Timothy P. Foley et al. (eds), Gender and Colonialism (Galway, 1995), pp. 72-85.40 Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise, pp. 182, 187.
41 Dana L. Robert, Occupy Until I Come: A.T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Eerdmans,
2003), chap. 6; William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago, 1993), chap. 4.
42 Austin, China's Millions, pp. 280 ff.; Mrs Howard Taylor, Pastor Hsi (of North China); One of China's Christians (New York, 1905).
43 Jonathan D. Spence, The Taiping Vision of a Christian China, 1836-1864 (Waco, 1996), pp. 10-11.
44 Rudolf G. Wagner, Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion (Berkeley, 1982).
45 Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860-1900 (London, 2003).
46 Jessie G. Lutz and Rolland Ray Lutz, Hakka Chinese Confront Protestant Christianity, 1850-1900, with the Autobiographies of Eight Hakka Christians, and Commentary (London, 1998), p. 239.
47 Lutz and Lutz, Hakka Chinese Confront Protestant Christianity, chaps. 1, 19.
48 J.N. Ogilvie, Our Empire's Debt to Missions (London, 1923), p. 20.
49 Hayden J.A. Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860-1920 (London,
2007), pp. 32-61.
50 Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, p. 51.
51 Alexander Duff, India and India Missions: Including Sketches of the Gigantic System of Hinduism (London, 1840), p. 325.
52 Duff, India and India Missions, p. 331. The reference here is to the towering sixteenth-century Scottish Protestant reformer, John Knox.
53 John C.B. Webster, ‘Dalits and Christianity in Colonial Punjab: Cultural Interactions', in Judith M. Brown and Robert Eric Frykenberg (eds), Christians, Cultural Interactions, and India's Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids, 2002), pp. 93, 99.
54 Chandra Mallampalli, ‘Caste, Catholicism, and History “from Below,” 1863-1917', in Richard Fox Young (ed.), India and the Indianness of Christianity: Essays on Understanding—Historical, Theological, and Bibliographica—in Honor of Robert Eric Frykenberg (Grand Rapids, 2009), pp. 152-154.
55 Chandra Mallampalli, ‘British Missions and Indian Nationalism, 1880-1908', in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, pp. 177-178.
56 Ibid., pp. 179-180.
57 Judith M. Brown, ‘Who is an Indian? Dilemmas of National Identity at the End of the British Raj in India', in Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions,.Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids, 2003), pp. 111-131.
58 Robert Eric Frykenberg, ‘Christian Missions and the Raj', in Norman Etherington (ed.), Mission and Empire (Oxford, 2005), p. 126.
59 Ogilvie, Our Empire's Debt, pp. 3, 65.
60 Alan Anderson, Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, 2007), chap. 4.
61 Anonymous missionary at a convention in New York, quoted in Anderson, Spreading Fires, p. 99.
62 Ado K. Tiberondwa, Missionary Teachers as Agents of Colonialism: A Study of Their Activities in Uganda, 1877-1925 (Kampala, 1998).
63 Stanley, The Bible and the Flag, chaps. 1, 8.
64 Frykenberg, ‘Christian Missions and the Raj', p. 107.
65 J.Z. Hodge, quoted in Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (Grand Rapids, 2010), p. 128.
Further reading
Austin, Alvyn, China's Millions: The China Inland Mission and Late Qing Society, 1832-1905 (Grand Rapids, 2007).
Bellenoit, Hayden J.A., Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860-1920 (London,
2007).
Brown, Judith M., and Robert Frykenberg (eds), Christians, Cultural Interactions and India's Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids, 2002).
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2 vols (Chicago, 1991, 1997).
Cox, Jeffrey, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York, 2008).
Etherington, Norman (ed.), Missions and Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford, 2005).
Girardot, Norman J., The Victorian Translation of China:James Legge's Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley, 2002).
Hardiman, David (ed.), Healing Bodies, Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa (New York, 2006). Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford, 2002).
Koreih, ChimaJ., and Raphael Chijioke Njoku (eds), Missions, States, and European Expansion in Africa (London, 2007).
Latourette, Kenneth S., A History of Christian Missions in China (New York, 1929).
Lutz, Jessie Gregory, Opening China: Karl FA. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations, 1827-1852 (Grand Rapids, 2008).
Oliver, Roland, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952).
Peel, J.D.Y., Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Indianapolis, 2000).
Piggin, Stuart, Making Evangelical Missionaries, 1789-1858: The Social Background, Motives and Training of British Protestant Missionaries to India (Abingdon, 1984).
Porter, Andrew (ed.), The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880-1914 (Grand Rapids,
2003).
Porter, Andrew, ‘Cambridge, Keswick, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Attitudes to Africa', The Journal of Commonwealth History, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1976), pp. 5-34.